Art slouch

So, last weekend then.

You do kind of reach a point where the children just can't be in the house any longer. Or perhaps that's just our children. Anyway, we were up at 7am on Sunday and by 10.30am cabin fever had arrived.

So we were out of the house like a shot.

If you nip under the railway bridge by the station and follow the higgle piggle of 19th century weavers cottages, you'll find The Lizard, a whacking great meadow. It's owned by a trust for the benefit of the people of the town. Basically, it's a big bit of land that no-one can build a housing estate on. Which is fine by me.

So, as I've mentioned before, the town is celebrating the Abbey being 900 years old and art is very much on the agenda. As such, a plan was hatched to built three towers on The Lizard, the first of which opened in May. So we went to have a look...

I'm no art slouch - I have qualifications and everything, although I am very much lapsed - but this is a conceptutual piece, right? A wooden observation tower from which you can't see anything. Profound stuff. Actually, it's quite nice, it was built be Jony Easterby, whose work you can find here...

Anyway, the local freesheet had a great story last week about this boy, who along with his friends who had built a massive tree house in mum's back garden. It was a bolthole, a sleepover type place. Can't find the picture online, might have to dig it out of the bin, but here's the story.

They say it's cost them £30, with most of the materials being scavenged from various places.

Made me wonder how much the tower cost. I had a poke around and it's surprisingly difficult to find out... I did find the brief which has it at £200 a day x 31 days + £800 to 'facilitate community liaison' for 30 hours, ish, (ie, talk to school children, meet the mayor, etc) and £3,000 for fabrication, delivery and installation. Blimey eh?

That seems like a lot of cash doesn't it? Nice as it is, I'm not sure it's worth that sort of spend. I wonder if they got a quote from a local chippy? Personally, I'd like to have seen the tree house boys commissioned to build some in The Lizard.